Between two parting screens of lights was a bulging darkness. Yeung-Sung wriggled his little eyeballs, warming them into opening up. He gasped. “Darnes?”

The strange, wooden interior locked into view; he was up in his colony apartment, in his bed, with Darnes overlooking him. Hunched over by the desk on the far side of the room -once again stocked with a jug of water- the owner of the Wick slid his hands roughly against each other as if they were engaged in civil war.

“Darnes? What are you doing here?” Yeung-Sung made out, then itched at his dry throat.

The barkeeper paled and flung his hands behind his back. He didn’t meet his eyes.

“It’s all my fault.”

He began to rise, offering assistance but Yeung-Sung shook his head and raised himself up -softly feeling out the limits of his aches and pains. What? He took a quick survey of the yet unfamiliar room before asking Darnes, “Why am I here?”

Darnes bit his lip and smacked back down into the chair. “I begged for them to take you to the infirmary,” he began, “but they wouldn’t -they, they said…” He took a forced breath. “They said it was mostly bruises, that’s all it was. That you just needed rest.”

Darnes’s wild, wide eyes quivered at the sight of Yeung-Sung in pain. Swallowing roughly through his swollen throat, Yeung-Sung grabbed his covers and drew them closer. “Why,” he started, before the agony tore the rest out of him. His arms quaked like splintering twigs. Trying to isolate the source and put pressure on it, he looked down. My entire upper half is covered in bandages!

“It’s a lot of bruises, hmmph! I tried, Yeung-Sung. Please believe me, I tried to tell them,” Darnes said. His Germanic consonants were spat out like salty rocks. Much different from the British, American or even Asian accents that were abundant, making Yeung-Sung feel like flinching every time he opened his mouth.

After the pain had mostly ebbed away, Yeung-Sung divorced control of his arms. Swivelling with his core he tried to find a comfortable position. He sucked in air through gritted teeth and nodded at Darnes. “I understand. Thank you, in any case,”. Propped against the backing of his bed and leaning partly on a pillow at his right side he bared a smile. The fabric felt damp and stank of sweat, but his bandages at least seemed fresh. Darnes, thankfully, allowed Yeung-Sung to settle before he continued.

“How do you feel?”

“Amazing. How long have I been recovering?”

Darnes raised an eyebrow at the snappy response. Stretching his legs, he must have decided that he would stand anyway. “Okay. Given the situation, I’ll excuse that attitude.” He strode forward a step. Yeung-Sung noticed him snatch a thin item off the table, almost out of view. A syringe? Yeung-Sung pressed his back against the backboard. Smooth and cold, it caused him to shiver, then immediately after bow his head through the proceeding pain.

“Only a day- a full day, however.” Darnes gave his chin an absent-minded scratch. “Some would say that’s a long time, right after the reset. But don’t get up.” He stared with a stiff expression. “You should stay here for another two. At least,” he warned. “It won’t kill you not to move.”

Yeung-Sung noticed something as he was being lectured. “Why do you have my phone?”

Darnes blinked. “Oh, yes. Here.”

“Ughg, no. I don’t want it.” Yeung-Sung turned his head away.

Darnes growled. “You’ll fall behind. Don’t be a child. You can easily stay afloat,” he said, then added,” and have enough for as many pints as you like.” He wagged the phone in front of Yeung-Sung with a chuckle. “Besides, you’ll need something to do.”

“I’ll- I don’t know, read a book.”

Darnes leaned menacingly close. “There are no books. There’s no TV. There’s no internet, “he growled. Then he drew back, the anger gone from his voice, “I thought that was clear.”

“Then I’ll just have to stare at the fucking wall then, won’t I?” said Yeung-Sung.

Darnes inhaled. He stared at Yeung-Sung, puffing up his chest. His eyebrows were the bristling spine of a wild cat. He slapped the phone down. “Open it.”

Yeung-Sung wasted no time in stretching a fingertip under the sensor. The barkeep let out a whistling breath, sloping his shoulders down. He snapped it back up in an instant and lurched away into the chair.

“Airgead is the entire purpose of this colony,” he started, “At the end of the day, everything that GLI decides to facilitate us with is tied to this single, express goal. Anything else is a luxury, one that can very easily be taken away” He paused, looking up from his typing, “So, could you please stop riling them up by being so stubborn? Think for a moment, about what we could lose.”

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Yeung-Sung stared back and pulled as much of a face as his body would permit. But Darnes wasn’t looking at him anymore. Reclining again, he looked up at the ceiling and asked, “What are you even doing?”

“As always,” Darnes replied, still focused on the phone, “I’m trying to help you. You’d better thank Wil -buy him a few rounds, stroke his ego- because if he didn’t vouch for you, I wouldn’t care at all.”

Yeung-Sung listened to a succession of precise taps, followed by creaking steps.

“There. I added you to our chat.”

Yeung-Sung looked down, mouth agape as Darnes flipped the phone, bouncing it off his pillow.

“Don’t worry you don’t have to respond; it’s not a faction. And you can leave whenever you like.”

He scuttled out to the door. Clicked open the lock. “Oh,” Darnes said, “almost forgot.”

Turning his head, slowly, Yeung-Sung tried to face the barkeep, maybe say sorry before he left, when Darnes stabbed him. The pain was in and out and so was he. Clenching through it, he yelled out a hoarse “Wait!”, but it was too late.

Yeung-Sung twisted his right arm so he could see it; a tiny red prickle in between the folds of two white strips. “A painkiller, I assume.”

He relinquished control, letting his arm once again hang limp. That’s fine. I hope it kicks in soon. His eyes wandered into the horizon through the screen window, but it had only been five seconds before he felt vibrations by his hips. His phone lit up; a message. Pa-king! – went the alert tone.

Groaning, he dived into his pillow, nestling his ears especially deep inside it, and waited for the meds to take effect.

Pa-king!

The phone crept closer with each vibration, shaking his leg.

“No!” he said, voice muffled, “Go away.”

Yeung-Sung struggled with the thought that he would never just be left alone. If GLI were so concerned with making the world a lovely, happy place, then surely there should be an option not to participate -my voluntary right! Oh, but I guess I have no rights. Even the UN agreed on that. Thanks.

What’s this phone even beeping on about, anyway? Is it the members of The Wick already? Have they been waiting for me all this time? Maybe I could say, hi, then ghost them after that.

Pa-king! The phone nudged him again.

“Aren’t there more important things to be doing than spending our lives on an app?” he moaned. “I wish I could find somebody who’s not so obsessed with sucking up to Jordan.”

Moments passed without another buzz. Unfurling from the pillow, Yeung-Sung turned over, teary-eyed and watched the whorls in the ceiling’s grain. He felt oddly lighter. He swayed and swayed, creating the illusion of movement in the wood, his body’s struggles fading away, growing insignificant in the face of his annoyance at the colony.

Then his phone lit up again, the glow staying awake after the initial flash. There was no vibration. No alert. Instead, a female voice spoke to him; a distinct voice that retained some of the robotic disjointedness that Yeung-Sung was used to in text-to-speech, but in place of a quantized sentence, a foreign, melancholic melody played along the words.

[Speech controls activated]

[Software initialised: Management of Electronic Databases; MEDB]

“May-eve?” Yeung-Sung exclaimed. The pronunciation didn’t line up with how he understood English. M-E-D-B would sound like med-buh, wouldn’t it?

[Archaic for the modern Irish “Maedbh”, the “d” and “b” together make a “v” sound. Hi! How can I help you?]

She heard me. And responded. That bastard Darnes must’ve activated this mode to try and force me to use Airgead.

Yeung-Sung rolled over. The motion was surprisingly easy. It was fluid and -The painkillers! They’re making me loopy.

“I’d like to get out of bed.”

MEDB laughed. [That you’ll have to sort out yourself. I’m here to facilitate control of you Airgead account in the absence of accessibility, mobility or any other impairment.]

Yeung-Sung felt a heat in his cheeks. What an exotic laugh! Ahh, never mind. This is too strange; she must be a helpline GLI designed. Oh, maybe the one behind the voice is a scientist -perhaps I can learn some interesting information off this one.

“What’s your name?” He reworked the question in his head. “Your name, not the program or whatever. I’d like to know who I’m speaking to.”

There was a pause, long enough for the light from his phone to dampen. When it lit up again, Yeung-Sung searched for a dialogue box on screen, an avatar that acted as a vizard as she spoke.

[I don’t quite get what you mean by that. I am MEDB] Visually, the app lay dormant, displaying the same idle animation of his sparking character running through a village.

Suddenly, his Airgead menus came alive and blew quickly across the screen, as if a ghostly thumb was shuffling through them. It settled on his profile settings.

[And you are Pak Yeung-Sung]

“Of course,” Yeung-Sung said, backing away from the device. “Wouldn’t you know that already, seeing as you’re a part of the game?”

[I am MEDB, a management supervisor of electronic databases. Though I am familiar, intimately, with its systems, I am not a part of the main program of Airgead itself…]

MEDB came out with a distorted chuckle. [Although, I can understand the confusion]

Yeung-Sung pushed himself up with an arm, leaning his head forward enough to monitor what was going on inside the game. “What’s going on?” he asked, trying to keep his voice -and arm- steady. The invisibly led motion continued on screen. It landed on his designated profession tab, where he had typed before, dwelling on it for several seconds before resuming what looked like a full appraisal of his account.

[Oh, dear. It appears you need a lot of help]

[In comparison to all other member data that I have analysed, you have by far the least resources]

[Have you done anything?]

Yeung-Sung grabbed the phone, squeezing it within his grasp and shouted, “That’s because I don’t want to use Airgead. I don’t want to be here at all!” Snorting, he bit into a frown. “Anyway, stop that! I didn’t give you permission to “analyse” me.”

[I’m so-o-rry. However, you gave me no instructions, so I began assembling a projection of your intentions.]

His grip weakened as he cycled his face through different versions of disbelief. His chest was also feeling incredibly light and stretchy, like his lungs were balloons. Drool came out of his mouth, which he tried to lick back into place.

[Would you like to me proceed with the creation of poisons for use in potions?]

Why is this program telling me what to do?

Yeung-Sung reeled back, the phone plopped from his hand, and the meds finally kicked all the way in.